{"id":80,"date":"2013-01-22T16:10:25","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T22:10:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=80"},"modified":"2013-02-12T11:15:29","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T17:15:29","slug":"ch-1-f-crisis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=80","title":{"rendered":"ch. 1. f.   Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1.e     A Brush With the Numinous\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=76\">&lt; previous\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1. g.   Something New\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=83\">next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here:<\/em><br \/>\n<div id=\"mp3jWrap_0\" class=\"mjp-s-wrapper s-graphic unsel-mjp  verdana-mjp\" style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span id=\"playpause_wrap_mp3j_0\" class=\"wrap_inline_mp3j\" style=\"font-weight:700;\"><span class=\"gfxbutton_mp3j play-mjp\" id=\"playpause_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"group_wrap\"><span class=\"bars_mp3j\"><span class=\"loadB_mp3j\" id=\"load_mp3j_0\"><\/span><span class=\"posbarB_mp3j\" id=\"posbar_mp3j_0\"><\/span><\/span><span class=\"T_mp3j\" id=\"T_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">1. Chapter-1-f<\/span><span class=\"indi_mp3j\" style=\"font-size:9.8px;\" id=\"statusMI_0\"><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div><span class=\"s-nosolution\" id=\"mp3j_nosolution_0\" style=\"display:none;\"><\/span><script>\nMP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0 = [\n\t{ name: \"1. Chapter-1-f\", formats: [\"mp3\"], mp3: \"aHR0cHM6Ly9oYW5pbGl2ZXMuY29tL3dwLWNvbnRlbnQvdXBsb2Fkcy9IUy1OZXctQ2gtMS1mLm1wMw==\", counterpart:\"\", artist: \"\", image: \"\", imgurl: \"\" }\n];\n<\/script>\n\n<script>MP3jPLAYERS[0] = { list: MP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0, tr:0, type:'single', lstate:'', loop:false, play_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pause_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pp_title:'', autoplay:false, download:false, vol:100, height:'' };<\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-29\" alt=\"300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17\" src=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>I lost it, of course, the state of wonder I\u2019d experienced, felt it slip through my fingers as I plummeted back to daily life.\u00a0 But even if I couldn\u2019t get it back, I had the memory of it, and I knew, even if I never found it again, that that one glimpse of something \u2026 more\u2026 had changed my life.\u00a0 I told myself, forlornly, that I should be willing to settle for that; that maybe that was it for me in this lifetime.<\/p>\n<p>I was wrong.\u00a0 It turns out that when that cosmic drumbeat starts up, it can become very, very insistent.\u00a0 It also turns out that the Cosmos has a tendency to present its gifts wrapped in some very, very unnerving packaging.\u00a0 Obviously that\u2019s what it sometimes takes to get our attention.\u00a0 My own package arrived only weeks after that initial experience, slamming into my life hard enough to shake loose every last vestige of my resistance.<\/p>\n<p>The crisis center, on a night so raw the cold scraped at your lungs when you breathed.\u00a0\u00a0 A teenage girl stumbled in, about nine p.m., scared shitless.\u00a0 Patty and I were on duty, mostly to answer the hot line phones at that time of night.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t actually open for business.\u00a0 But there she was, pounding on the carefully bolted door, battered, freaking out, so we pulled her in and hastily locked the door behind her.\u00a0 It took the two of us twenty minutes just to calm her down, get her to drink something hot, let us dab at the minor cuts, try to override her refusal to call the EMS.\u00a0 Finally, we began to extract her story.<\/p>\n<p>It was brutal.\u00a0 Yolanda was one of those tough cookies, with a gangbanger boyfriend.\u00a0 He\u2019d convinced her to \u201cprove her love\u201d by going through a gang initiation, which for girls was exactly that:\u00a0 gang banging.\u00a0 Gang rape.<\/p>\n<p>And even for this tough girl \u2013 and god, were some of those gang girls tough \u2013 it had broken her.\u00a0 She freaked and ran, half-dressed, stumbling, crying, all the way to our center.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t know what kind of physical damage she\u2019d sustained until we could get the EMS in, but we could already predict the psychological scars.\u00a0 <i>Goddamn<\/i>.\u00a0 How can people do these things?<\/p>\n<p>It got worse.\u00a0 Even though we were rigorous about maintaining security \u2013 for these very reasons \u2013 the boyfriend, humiliated in front of his asshole peers no doubt, came after her.<\/p>\n<p>We always had the doors locked, but, as we were still sitting with her, trying to calm her down, we heard a terrible commotion in the outer office.\u00a0 The kid was trying to break the door down.\u00a0 In a black rage, who knew what he was on?\u00a0 Patty and I were both shaking.\u00a0 But she told me to stay with Yolanda, hide in the back room, barricade ourselves and call 911.\u00a0 I pleaded with Patty not to go out there, what was she going to do?<\/p>\n<p>Keep him there and distracted until the police come, she said.\u00a0 I grabbed the phone, and from somewhere strength came through my voice.\u00a0 I gave all the pertinent info, as fast as I could talk.\u00a0 The police didn\u2019t always answer calls very quickly in this neighborhood.\u00a0 I knew I had to convince them it was serous.<\/p>\n<p>I shoved Yolanda into the back storeroom, and roughly whispered at her to keep quiet and out of sight.\u00a0 You never knew with these girls.\u00a0 As bad as things were, I\u2019ve seen them change their minds, go running back to the very jerks they were running away from.\u00a0 I tiptoed back up the hall to see what was happening with Patty.<\/p>\n<p>The door held, but only that reinforced glass separated her from this kid, bandana, tats, the whole thing, slamming his fist on the door from outside, calling Patty every name in the book.<\/p>\n<p>And Patty \u2013 I could tell she was scared, too, could see her breath heaving, but her voice was low and\u2026 there was a quality to it that I can\u2019t even describe.\u00a0 She was just talking to him, not saying anything particularly significant, just talking, and there was so much \u2026 love\u2026 coming through.\u00a0 I thought about how I\u2019d always picked that up from her, but I guess part of me thought it was all some kind of act.\u00a0 I guess I was used to all those Boulder hippie types who wore their \u201cenlightenment\u201d like some ego-badge.<\/p>\n<p>But this was\u2026 different.\u00a0 I could feel her sincerity, somehow knew that stupid asshole kid could feel it too.\u00a0 She let him pound out his frustration, let his words flow over and past her \u2013 we got a lot of language like that, and it\u2019s almost impossible not to feel it lodging in your gut like a knife stab.<\/p>\n<p>And then, somehow, he wasn\u2019t yelling, he was\u2026 crying, and by that time, the flashing of cop cars \u2013 from both directions &#8211;\u00a0 hemmed him in.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t believe they\u2019d sent not one but 2 units, unheard of with all the budget cuts.\u00a0 They were able to walk right up to him.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t even put up much of a fight as they hauled him off.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1.e     A Brush With the Numinous\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=76\">&lt; previous\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1. g.   Something New\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=83\">next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &lt; previous\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 next &gt; &nbsp; Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here: &nbsp; I lost it, of course, the state of wonder I\u2019d experienced, felt it slip through my fingers as I plummeted back to daily life.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=80\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-80","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":381,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/80\/revisions\/381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}